The musician, composer and arranger who has collaborated with the greatest French artists is playing this evening at Jazz Equinoxe, in Bastia, at 9 p.m. Portrait.
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The magnificent Gretsch bass that sits on stage, in the courtyard of the Palais des Gouverneurs de Bastia, is no longer really red. The instrument is patinated by the years, and the hundreds of hours on stage.
Maxime Le Forestier, Renaud, Francis Cabrel, Diane Dufresne, France Gall, Michel Sardou, Jean-Jacques Goldman… It’s all the elite of French variety who, over the decades, have offered themselves the services of Pascal Arroyo.
Pascal Arroyo in rehearsal before the Jazz Equinoxe concert. • © FTV
But it is above all Bernard Lavilliers whose musician invited by Jazz Equinoxe will be the inseparable companion. “In the mid-1970s, I had formed a group near Rouen, with friends. Nemo. One evening, we perform on stage, and Bernard Lavilliers, who was not really known at the time, is in the room. He had played the day before in the area, and had an evening off… We got along well, and he told us that, as soon as he had enough budget to hire musicians, he would call us. We hadn’t paid too much attention to it, and yet, a year later, he did.”
The two men will collaborate, on stage, but also in the studio.
In the end, no less than thirty songs were co-signed by Lavilliers and Arroyo, including The Golden HandsSmall, Gentlemen of Fortune, Miscellaneous Facts, The Mongol Clan, Jamaica, Fear or State of play.
A loyalty that has spanned the decades. Last month, again, on the stage of the Nights of the Guitar of Patrimonio, Pascal Arroyo played the bass in the group of the singer from Saint-Etienne.
But tonight, at Jazz Equinoxe, Pascal Arroyo will take center stage, joined throughout the evening by his guests, including Patrizia Poli, with whom he signed the album in 2019 universesu. And it is with particular pleasure that he will play, once again, on this island that he knows so well.
“Today I have three halves”, s’amuse Pascal Arroyo. “I am half Norman, half Andalusian, and half Corsican!”
It was on a Bernard Lavilliers tour that the bassist met Patrizia Poli, who provided the first part of the concerts with The new Corsican polyphonies.
I worked a lot in the studio, composed a lot, but what I prefer is to show off on stage
Very quickly, they share the stage. A complicity that will develop further when, a few years later, Pascal visits Corsica. “I came for eight days, and I never really left! I found a friend there. We started working together, and this collaboration gave Versuniversu…”
When asked how old he is, Pascal Arroyo smiles, but is careful not to answer. “For those who want to know, there is always Wikipedia”. When we are surprised by his youthful air, when he started in music more than half a century ago, Pascal Arroyo answers, with a mischievous air: “It’s the music that does that. The musicians, either they died of drugs, or alcohol, or they look younger than their age”.
Pascal Arroyo concludes, after a few moments of reflection: “That’s the stage, that. Contact with the public, there’s nothing like it. If you don’t like that, you might as well change jobs. I worked a lot in the studio, composed a lot, but this what I prefer is going to show off on stage”.
The musician adjusts his cap, grabs his red Gretsch, and joins the musicians for a new balance, and final adjustments, before the concert tonight. Being smart is one thing, but you might as well do it well…
Lorient Interceltic Festival
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